French Bou­quet

This minia­ture quilt is small in size, but big and beau­ti­ful in im­pact. Se­lect nine fat quar­ters to make it hap­pen, and give it to some­one need­ing a touch of cheer.

Pro­ject Note

Be­fore sand­wich­ing the top for quilt­ing, a mono­gram may be ma­chine-embroidered in the cen­ter of the wreath, if de­sired. In the sam­ple quilt, a de­tailed orig­i­nal-de­sign quilt mo­tif is quilted in the cen­ter in­stead of a mono­gram.

4. Fold the A square ver­ti­cally and hor­i­zon­tally, and crease to mark cen­ters. Re­peat with the 10" square of pa­per.

5. Pre­pare a pat­tern for the full-size ap­pliqué. Us­ing a black marker, trace the pat­tern onto the 10" square of pa­per; match­ing the cen­ters as shown in Fig­ure 3. 6. Cen­ter the draw­ing un­der the A square, match­ing cen­ter mark with creases on A as shown in Fig­ure 4; trace the de­sign onto A us­ing a wa­ter-erasable marker or pen­cil. 7. Cen­ter the pre­pared bias stem on the traced cir­cle with the ends po­si­tioned to meet un­der one of the flower shapes; fuse in place. Note: To re­duce bulk, you may cut the bias in pieces to fit just un­der the flower pieces on each side be­fore fus­ing as shown in Fig­ure 5.

8. Us­ing the tan silk thread and a very close and nar­row blan­ket stitch, stitch the edges of the stem piece/ pieces in place along each side.

9. Cen­ter, layer and fuse large and medium flow­ers and flower cen­ters us­ing the marked out­line as guides for po­si­tion­ing.

10. Ar­range and fuse leaf pieces us­ing the marked out­line as a guide for po­si­tion­ing.

11. Sew around each fused shape as in step 8 to com­plete the ap­pliquéd cen­ter.

Com­plet­ing the Top

1. Sew a B strip to the top and bot­tom, and C strips to op­po­site sides of the ap­pliquéd cen­ter; press seams to­ward B and C strips.

2. Sew D strips to the top and bot­tom, and E strips to op­po­site sides of the ap­pliquéd cen­ter to com­plete the quilt top; press seams to­ward D and E strips.

Fin­ish­ing the Quilt

1. Trans­fer the quilt­ing de­sign given to the cen­ter of the ap­pliquéd A square.

2. Pre­pare the fin­ished top for quilt­ing, quilt and bind re­fer­ring to Quilt­ing Ba­sics on page 124.